If that he loved be evil, he will fain
Hate it!...  Howbeit, thy pleasure shall be done. 
Some other ship shall bear her, not mine own.... 
Thou counsellest very well....  And when we come
To Argos, then ...  O then some pitiless doom
Well-earned, black as her heart!  One that shall bind
Once for all time the law on womankind
Of faithfulness!...  ’Twill be no easy thing,
God knoweth.  But the thought thereof shall fling
A chill on the dreams of women, though they be
Wilder of wing and loathed more than she!

[Exit, following HELEN, who is escorted by the Soldiers.

* * * * *

CHORUS[42].

Some Women.

[Strophe I.

  And hast thou turned from the Altar of frankincense,
    And given to the Greek thy temple of Ilion? 
  The flame of the cakes of corn, is it gone from hence,
     The myrrh on the air and the wreathed towers gone? 
And Ida, dark Ida, where the wild ivy grows, The glens that run as rivers from the summer-broken snows, And the Rock, is it forgotten, where the first sunbeam glows,
    The lit house most holy of the Dawn?

EURIPIDES

Others.

      [Antistrophe I.

  The sacrifice is gone and the sound of joy,
    The dancing under the stars and the night-long prayer: 
  The Golden Images and the Moons of Troy,
    The twelve Moons and the mighty names they bear: 
My heart, my heart crieth, O Lord Zeus on high, Were they all to thee as nothing, thou throned in the sky,
 Throned in the fire-cloud, where a City, near to die,
  Passeth in the wind and the flare?

A Woman.

       [Strophe 2.

Dear one, O husband mine,
  Thou in the dim dominions
Driftest with waterless lips,
Unburied; and me the ships
Shall bear o’er the bitter brine,
  Storm-birds upon angry pinions,
Where the towers of the Giants[43] shine
O’er Argos cloudily,
And the riders ride by the sea.

Others.

And children still in the Gate
  Crowd and cry,
A multitude desolate,
Voices that float and wait
  As the tears run dry: 
’Mother, alone on the shore
  They drive me, far from thee: 
Lo, the dip of the oar,
  The black hull on the sea! 
Is it the Isle Immortal,
  Salamis, waits for me? 
Is it the Rock that broods
Over the sundered floods
Of Corinth, the ancient portal
  Of Pelops’ sovranty?’

A Woman.

[Antistrophe 2.

Out in the waste of foam,
    Where rideth dark Menelaus,
Come to us there, O white
And jagged, with wild sea-light
And crashing of oar-blades, come,
    O thunder of God, and slay us: 
While our tears are wet for home,
While out in the storm go we,
Slaves of our enemy!